


Fortunate Son

by DarthVictoriana



Series: Fortunate Son [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, F/M, Political Alliances, Slow Burn-ish, The product of seeing Blackkklansmen twice in a week, Vietnam War, Watergate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 09:43:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15838683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarthVictoriana/pseuds/DarthVictoriana
Summary: Welcome to Washington D.C., 1972: about three hundred American troops are dying every week in Vietnam, Zeppelin and Bowie dominate the airwaves, and some very interesting information about President Nixon is about to break. It's a jungle out there.And a young woman named Rey is going to find her place in it all.





	Fortunate Son

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thanks for visiting my Watergate Scandal, 1970s AU! This work is entirely the product of watching Blackkklansmen twice in one week, and reading way too much about Watergate.
> 
> Before we start, a few housekeeping notes: Many thanks to my beta reader, SulaRae. She writes a fantastic superhero/sassy reporters AU that you can read [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14506650/chapters/33515232).
> 
> Please keep an eye out for the archive warnings, as well as all the sex, drugs, rock and roll, smoking, politics, Vietnam war bullshit, and race issues that are going to be inherent to the early 1970s. This chapter in particular has brief mentions of suicide/self harm, and racism among law enforcement, but nothing graphic.
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading this story at least half as much as I enjoyed writing it!

_Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash_

_Just who do think I am?_

_You raise my taxes,_

_Freeze my wages_

_And send my son to Vietnam._

 

_Mr. Backlash, Mr. Backlash_

_Just what do you think I got to lose?_

_I'm gonna leave you_

_With the backlash blues._

_You're the one will have the blues_

_Not me, just wait and see!_

 

 _Early April, 1972_  
_Two Months Until The Watergate Robbery_

 

Rey skittered around a corner and nearly fell, flailing her arms for balance. She righed herself and kept running, legs burning, heels pounding into the concrete.  
  
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” She looked behind herself. The cops hadn’t turned the corner yet, but they must have seen where she went. Her black beret flew off her head, tumbling to the ground behind her. She kept running. She had others.

Her eyes fell on an alley a few yards ahead of her. A car waiting to make a turn honked at her, the driver leaning out the window. “Hey, where you going in such a rush, sugar?”

“And fuck you too!” Rey yelled back without stopping, turning and running down the alley. Halfway down the alley she saw him on the opposite curb: a black haired man on a running motorcycle, staring up at the buildings on either side of him and smoking a cigarette.

Desperation is one hell of a motivator, and that’s where Rey was at in that moment. She flat out sprinted towards him, sweat prickling all over her, and burst out of the alley. The man didn’t register her at all as she used the edge of the curb to take a flying leap onto the back of his motorcycle.

“Jesus Christ!” His arms shot up, cigarette flying out of his hand.

“GO, GO, GO!” Rey yelled.

The man twisted around to look at her. He was a big man, with equally massive brown eyes. Hazel, maybe? The glance was quick, but like he was looking through her nonetheless.

“Drive!” She tucked her feet up, and wrapped both arms around him.

He shrugged, pushed off the edge of the curb out into the street. “Which way are we going?”

“That way!” Rey pointed to their left.

The man brought the bike around, engine revving like thunder and earning himself an angry honk as a car slammed on its breaks.

Rey looked behind them as they roared away, scanning for the cops. None in sight. She allowed herself a tiny sigh of relief. And then immediately wanted to slap herself for jumping on a stranger’s motorcycle and yelling at him. He probably thought he was being mugged.

But on the upside, it worked. She gave him a hesitant squeeze around the middle. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” He yelled. Rey let herself slump against his back. She was starting to jitter.

The whole scenario (everything that led up to motorcycle-jacking this nice man) could have gone worse. It could have gone much, much better, but it also could have gone much worse. At the very least she hadn’t gotten arrested, and neither had her crew. That last bit was a particular success, as Rey was the one in their group who was least likely to get beaten into a bloody pulp by the heat.

Actually, it was a smashing success that she hadn’t been arrested either. Demonstrating that you throw a damn fine haymaker on one of DC’s finest tends to result in being brought up on charges for assaulting a police officer. But that’s what you got for laying hands on her best friend, who was also one of the members of the Mosaic Student Union for a More Ethical Society of which Rey was president. And Rey took her duties as president of the Mosaic Union extremely seriously.

They stopped at a red light. The man twisted around and asked her something...and Rey, lost in her thoughts, had missed every syllable. “Sorry, what?”

“I said, ‘where are we going, anyway?’”

“Really, anything that’s away from the protest works for me.” Rey said shakily, trying to make herself laugh.

“Got to be a little too much?”

“No, it’s more...I had to run from the heat?” She ended on an upswing. She really hoped he was cool and wasn’t going to blow his lid. _I jumped on your motorcycle and used you to elude the police_ sounds way worse when you say it out loud.

“Ooh, rebel, rebel!” The man fake chided. “Now where are we going?”

“Oh, um. I…” Rey’s mind completely blanked. “I live….I live in…” She’d been stammering for a shockingly long time. Her whole body was shaking like a leaf in the wind.  “Adams Morgan! I live in Adams Morgan. But you can drop me somewhere in a few blocks, I’ll take a cab or something.” The light ahead of them turned green and they’re moving again. “Back to Adams Morgan. Where I live.”

They made it all of half a block before the man had to stop his bike behind a boarding bus while cars streamed past to their left.

“I’m not leaving you anywhere like this, Miss. I can feel you trembling and you didn’t remember where you live! How do you feel about stopping at a diner? Then I’ll take you home.”

“Um, sure.”

“What’s your name?” The man shouted over his shoulder, propelling them into a gap in traffic in the left lane.

“I’m Rey Lucas.”

“Ben.”

So Ben it was. It’s a good enough name, Rey supposed. It suited a person who looked like God had pulled a set of individually very pretty features out of stock, and then slapped them on a face at random without checking to see if anything matched. But more important than whether he was good looking or not (and Rey would have to consider that), he seemed to be a compassionate sort of human.

The kind of human who probably wouldn’t mind if she stuck her shaky hands in the turnbacks of his shearling coat, and hid her face against him. So she did it. He’d already accepted her so far. Rey felt his shoulder shift as he briefly moved one of his hands to pat hers.

“You’re fine now, Miss Rey.”

 

~

 

Rey finally got a chance to study her savior as they sat across from each other in the sticky diner booth. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’s seen him before. Was he an actor? _I would remember seeing lips that pouty on a screen, though_ , she thought. There was something about him that reminded her a little of Buddy Holly, that poor singer who had died horribly when she was nine years old. But that wasn’t it, she’d seen him somewhere else.

There was nothing particularly telling about his clothing. Just a plaid shirt and jeans, except for a lotus pendant carved out of some kind of green stone hanging on a cord around his neck.  

“That’s a nice necklace, Ben.” She asked, trying to get somewhere. “Are you a Buddhist?”

“Nope. My Uncle is, though. He thought I needed some protection after I got home.”

“Oh...Did you go to ‘Nam?” Her heart sank.

“Got drafted two years ago.” He nods.

“What branch?”

“Marines.” Well, that went a long way towards explaining the brick wall-esque physique she had felt a hint of while hanging on to him on his motorcycle. His hand on the table was clenched. “I was trying to go to the protest. Didn’t quite….pan out.”

Rey nodded. “I can dig that. Where are you from?”

“Connecticut. You?”

“Um...a lot of places? Let’s go with Oregon.” The whole thing was a bit of a tender spot for Rey. But she was still on a mission to find out what was familiar about Ben. “I like your motorcycle. You a big biker?”

He hesitated. “Ah, no.”

And Rey sure wasn’t going to let him stop talking, either. “Oh? Where’d you get it, then?”

“Same way I got the lotus. My mother decided after I tried to kill myself that I needed to go outside more. Which isn’t to say that I haven’t had enough outside time to last my whole life already, but it is nice to be able to slide through the car traffic. Anyhow tell me about yourself, Rey.” He said the whole thing in one breath, face dropping down into his hand at the end, trying to play it all off as lightly as possible.

There was no way Rey was going to slide past that one as easily, though. “Oh. Wow. That’s...that’s heavy. How are you doing?”

“Well that was months ago. My mother also decided I needed a good shrink and some strong MAOI’s. It’s in the past. I’d rather hear about how you punched a cop.”

“Oh, it’s not very exciting.” Rey felt herself blush. “The protest was getting kind of rowdy, I decided to clear my crew out from the front. I had a black man, a Latino, and an Asian woman with me. Got to keep your eyes open and be careful, you feel me?”

Ben nodded. “I feel you.”

“And I’m the president of our organization. It’s my job to look out for them. So I decided to move our crew away, and I was doing pretty good getting everybody out until one of the pigs decided to get really racist and take his anger out on Finn. Tried to grab him even though Finn wasn’t doing anything different from the rest of us. So I decked him. And then I had to run.”

The corners of Ben’s mouth curled up. It looked downright wicked. “I can dig it.”

They both stopped short, like they’d been caught doing something wrong, as their waitress came back with coffees. They both thanked her quietly, and Rey started fixing her coffee with creamers and sugar. Ben took the moment to fish a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of his pockets, and lit one.

“You need one?” He held up the pack by way of clarification.

“Please.”

He took the already lit cigarette out of his mouth and held it out to Rey. She thought for a second before she took it from him. “Thanks.”

He pulled another out of the pack and lit it for himself. Rey found herself much too interested in watching the smoke pouring out of his nose.

“What organization are you president of?”

“Mosaic Student Union.”

“Which is?”

“Short for Mosaic Student Union For a More Ethical Society. We’re sort of an inter-cause activist group. Some civil rights stuff, some anti-war stuff, some women’s movement stuff.  The group was founded by my predecessor and some of his friends because they wanted a more eclectic and intimate group than the big student Unions. You know, Black Student Union, Young Democrats, stuff like that. We raised five hundred dollars for holocaust survivors’ medical expenses last month!” Rey added the last bit so it sounded like the actually did something besides punch cops.

“How did you do that?” Ben asked.

“We stood on street corners near campus and said one of us would hold a live worm in our mouths one minute for every dollar given to support holocaust survivors.”

Ben’s nose wrinkled. “Good for you.”

Rey’s eyes travelled down his arm to his fingers drumming on the table, next to his lighter. It was engraved with the letters B.S. She pointed at it.

“Is that your monogram, or humor?”

His eyes followed her gesture. “Yes, those are my initials. It doesn’t stand for ‘bullshit,’ after all. Believe me, I’m very thankful to my parents for those initials every day..” He looked back up. “What are you studying?”

“Political science. What do you do?”

“I have an English degree. I’m a personal assistant, though.”

“To?” Rey’s ears pricked up. Finally, she was getting somewhere.

“A senator.”

  
Rey felt her mouth fall open. Everything dropped into place at once. Her eyes went from the initials on his lighter, back to him, and back to his lighter. “You’re Senator Organa-Solo’s son!”

He sighed wearily. “Yes, that’s me. At your service, Madam.”

The headlines she had read her sophomore year flashed back across her mind. _Connecticut Senator’s Son Kills Own Father in Automobile Accident! War Hero and Husband of Senator Organa-Solo Dead After Distraught Son Strikes Him with Car! Benjamin Solo, Son of Senator Organa-Solo, Will Not be Discharged from Draft After Involuntary Manslaughter Charges! Benjamin Solo was Hysterical Over Draft When He Struck and Killed Father, Sources Say!_

She heard Finn’s voice in her head all over again, as he shook his head at the media circus following the Solo car accident case, “This some for real fucked up shit, yo.”

“You can go ahead and say it.” Ben said wearily, and maybe even a little defiantly. He clearly expected her to follow _you’re Senator Organa-Solo’s son_ with _you’re the one who hit your dad with a car_.

Rey was pretty sure of what he meant by that comment, but she wasn’t about to say it either. “Wow. I’m surprised you didn’t elbow me to the pavement when I jumped you. I mean, all things considered.”

He didn’t laugh, but his mouth did quirk up again. “Me too. But then again the Viet Cong usually doesn’t smell like Patchouli.”

Rey thought that was meant to be a joke, so she chuckled. “Why didn’t you kick me off your bike, though?”  
  
“Because I know what real fear looks like. You were truly afraid.”

She nods. “That’s heavy, buddy.”

They fall into a silence. Which wasn’t the worst silence Rey could imagine. As it turned out, she was fine being quiet with Ben. But it only lasted a moment before the waitress brought their plates around.

There was another lull in conversation while Rey dove for the maple syrup to douse her pancakes in. Ben likewise poured himself a pool of ketchup for his meatloaf. “So you’re your old lady’s personal assistant now, huh?”

“Yeah it pays the bills.”

“Isn’t that nepotism?” Rey was only half joking.

He shook his head. “Not really. I’m not doing any official work for her. Private hire. I bring her her mail, and her lunch, and run her errands, and keep up with all her stuff, and answer her letters, and babysit her dogs, and she gives me a check every two weeks. It’s a bit like doing chores and getting an allowance again.”

“Oh. That sounds...nice.” Cushy. She meant cushy.

“Well the allowance is bigger now, but I have to spend it on keeping the electricity on. So.”

“Is that all you do?”

“No...I write.”

Rey’s ears perked metaphorically up. “What do you write?”

“Um.” He chases down a bite of meatloaf with a hard drag on his cigarette.  “I like poetry. I like science fiction--spent too many afternoons down at the matinee watching monster movies as a kid--but the thing that gets printed is pulp stories.”

“You’ve been published?!” Rey said with a grin. “Right on!”

Ben blushed powerfully. “They’re just dumb pulp stories in a trashy magazine.”

“Maybe, but how many people _don’t_ have pulp stories published in trashy magazine? That’s still pretty cool to me!”

Ben ducked his head and fiddled with his cigarette. “Thanks.”

“What are your stories about?”

“A couple Egyptologists. Exploring tombs, mummies, curses, pits full of scorpions, that kind of stuff.”

“That sounds fun! Where can I read something you wrote?” Rey propped her chin up in her hand.

Ben was still beet red. “Um. Look. When I said it was a trashy magazine...I meant that the serial I write is….kind of erotica sometimes? I mean, I do it to pay the bills. The magazine told me that’s what they wanted.”

He looked so abashed that Rey laughed flat out. “Awesome!! I still want to read it. Make love not war and all that.”

“Yeah, of course.” By that point he was smoking so furiously that he made himself cough.

“So where can I buy your work?”

“Any old comic shop. Most bookstores. Maybe even a newstand. The magazine is _Adventure Lovers’ Bi-Weekly_ , my pen name is Kylo Ren. But you _cannot_ tell people that. My mother is a Senator, after all.”

Rey mimed locking her lips and throwing away the key. “I won’t squeal.”

Ben smiled. “So what do you want to do with your political science expertise. Operate a nudist commune?”

“Haha! Maybe!” Rey let that one hang in the air for a moment before adding, “I’ll probably go to law school eventually. I think I’d like to be a public defender. Maybe an investigative reporter. I do love the folks over at the Post.”

“I like it. What’s the connection?”

She shrugged. “Somebody’s got to hold the law accountable to itself.”

This time his smile was slower, his eyes meeting hers. “Right on.”

Rey was trying to think of something to say, anything, when he laughed and looked out the window. “You’d like my mom.”

“I mean...your mom is a fucking icon. The rally where she used the last big monologue in _All My Sons_ and altered it on the fly to call for a withdrawal from Vietnam? That’s going down in protest rhetoric for a generation. She’s done so much for her nation…"

“Would you like to meet her sometime?” Ben blurted out.

“Would I like to meet your mom? Senator Organa-Solo?” Rey repeated, dumbfounded.

Ben backpedaled. “Not like, ‘would you like to meet my mom,’ meet my mom. ‘Would you like to meet Connecticut’s own iconic Senator Organa-Solo,’ would you like to meet my mom? Because I can make that a reality.”

“Yes!” Rey was practically bouncing in her seat. “Yes to the second! Not the first. That would be strange. But the second, yes!”

“Sure, I can do that some time. If you ever plan on talking to me again. Um…” He pointed down at his food with both forefingers. “I’m just going to eat this.”

“Yeah, yeah you should do that.”

The rest of their forty five minute stop in the diner was spent shoving their rapidly cooling food into their respective mouths, chain smoking, and in a much more casual pinging back and forth of questions.

“Do you like _Dune_?”

“Yeah, it’s a little slow. Heinlein?”

 “I don’t care how anti-racist he may be, Heinlein disgusts me as an author and a human. Fuck Heinlein sideways. Creepy war fetishist.”

 “It’s just the war fetish that gets you, not the incest?”

 “...Touché.”

 “Huxley?...”

 By the time they had finished and the check came, it was like they had known each other for much more than an hour. When their waitress dropped the check, Ben went instinctively for his wallet. Rey’s hands flew to her bag as well, fishing around. She pulled two dollars and fifty cents out, and pushed it smartly across the table to Ben.

He looked down at the money, and back up at Rey. He seemed confused.

 “For my half of the bill.”

 “The bill is less than five dollars, Rey.” She wasn’t sure whether to interpret that as him implying that she gave him too much money, or that she shouldn’t have given him any at all.

 “Well that’s part of the tip too.” She said as an explanation.

 “I’d be happy to treat you.”

 “Thanks. But my Auntie Maz taught me to always pay your own way so nobody thinks you owe them anything, and always have money for a taxi.” Rey tapped the table in front of the bills. “Take the cash.”

 “Sure. Thanks.”  He swept the money off the table with one giant hand, arranged Rey’s cash and his own to make a payment and tip, and reached for his coat. “Ready?”

 “Yep!” Rey tipped the rest of her coffee straight down her throat. She pumped a hand over her head. “We ride for Gondor!”

 “Is that what the kids are calling Adams Morgan now?” Ben snickered, standing up and putting on his coat. And damn, if he didn’t stand, and stand, and _stand_. Rey was a pretty tall woman, but he had a good six inches on her.

 “Pfft! _‘The kids._ ’ How old are you anyway?”

 “I’m twenty-nine.”

 “...You’re a little old.”

 “Yes, and you’re a little precocious.” He trailed behind her out of the diner.

 Their ride back to Adams Morgan was much nicer than the ride to the diner had been for Rey. Instead of huddling against his back and hiding her face, Rey kept her head up and enjoyed the cool breeze.

 Once they hit Adams Morgan, she began giving him directions. Rey’s apartment building was a three story walkup that had been crammed into the block in such an ungainly way that most of the apartments faced a large alley and a parking garage. Instead of directing him to the main entrance, Rey had Ben pull in down the alley.

 They both got off the motorcycle and turned to face each other.

"So…” Said Ben.

“That’s my castle.” Rey pointed to a third story window next to a fire escape. “We usually just use the fire escape as a front door. Easier.”

“I see.”

“Well...This is where we part ways!”  
  
"Rey!” A voice shouted from three stories up. A window on the other side of the one Rey had pointed out as her own had been opened, and a young man was hanging out. He waved both arms over his head. “You’re okay!”

 As they watched, a woman ducked through the window almost underneath the man’s body. “You made it back, Rey! Right on!”

 “I’m fine!” She waved back at them. “Finn, Rose, I’ll be right up! I’m just going to say goodbye to Ben first!”

 “Who’s Ben?” Finn shouted.

 Rey pointed at him. “This person I’m standing with, dumbass!”

 One last face appeared, mushed up against the top pane of the window. He bonked on the glass with his fist and shouted something.

 “What?”

 “Poe says, ‘We’re ordering out for Chinese!’” Rose relayed.

 “I’m coming up! Give me a minute!”

 “NO!” Finn yelled, and ducked his head back inside the building. He went to slam the window for dramatic effect. Unfortunately Rose’s head was still outside. “Rose, come back in. I need to slam the window. For the joke.” They could mostly hear him say.

 Rey shook her head, and turned back to Ben. “Well. You’ve met the gang now. That’s the Mosaic Union. Well, the ones that stayed over the spring break. Plus Poe. Poe’s my predecessor who graduated two years ago, but he just won’t leave.” Rey fished in her bag (to Ben the thing appeared nearly bottomless) and pulled out a pen. “Anyhow, you should hang with us sometime. I’m sure the Union would love to support your mom somehow. And we’re....” Rey looked like she was about to say something nice about the group, but instead she looked up at the closed window and the row of noses smashed onto the glass. “We’re entertaining.”

 “I...I might.” Ben mumbled. Rey wasn’t having it, though, and grabbed his wrist. She shoved his sleeve up before he could say anything. There were several fine, white lines running lengthwise down his forearm. Rey’s mouth flattened into a line, and her eyes darted up to meet his.

 “Well...” She pulled the cap off her pen with her mouth, and held his arm up as she scrawled a phone number across his forearm. She ended with a flourish, and capped her pen again. “That’s my number. Call me anytime. And you’d better take me to meet your mom!”  

 Without another word she turned on her heel, and jogged towards the fire escape.

 “Bye, Rey!” Ben called, waving. At the foot of the fire escape she looked over her shoulder, and flashed him one last smile and a wave before charging up the stairs, and being almost hauled into the apartment by her cohorts as soon as she knocked on the window.

 Ben was in real trouble, and he knew it.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem at the beginning is "Backlash Blues," by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. It was written for and sung by Nina Simone and is a standard of the Civil Rights Movement. 
> 
> The chapter title comes from ["Gimme Shelter,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbmS3tQJ7Os) by the Rolling Stones. Apparently not even the Stones know for sure whether it's an anti-war protest song or not.


End file.
